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Ross Ulbricht, the alleged Dread Pirate Roberts

Just a few months ago, the FBI claims, Ross Ulbricht held 144,000 bitcoins allegedly collected from his Web-based black market for drugs known as the Silk Road--nearly $100 million at today's exchange rates. Today, his family and friends are promising to offer up their life savings and even the value of their homes just to convince a judge to release the 29-year-old on bail.

In a letter filed today by Ulbricht's defense attorney Joshua Dratel, he asked Southern District of New York judge Kevin Fox to grant Ulbricht bail to live with his aunt in New York, arguing that Ulbricht shows little flight risk or danger to the community despite the FBI's allegations that he ran a massive online narcotics enterprise under the pseudonym the Dread Pirate Roberts before his arrest in October. And to demonstrate their faith that Ulbricht won't flee or violate his bail conditions, the letter notes that 24 family members and friends have pooled together more than $1 million in assets, including $700,000 in equity in his parents' Costa Rica-based business that represents their "entire life savings and also provides them with two-third of their income."

The letter also notes that any savings Ulbricht may have possessed himself have been seized by the FBI. "Thus, even if Mr. Ulbricht were to sacrifice the life savings, other assets, and livelihoods of his relatives and close friends, Mr. Ulbricht is now entirely financially dependent on those who would lose tremendous amounts of money if he were to fail to comply with the conditions and requirements the Court would impose as conditions of release," the letter reads.

Here's the full letter, which Dratel sent to me after redacting the names of Ulbricht's friends and family members to protect their privacy.

The 15-page document lays out a long profile of Ulbricht as a trustworthy young man who is loyal to his family and friends, noting his lack of a criminal record and graduate-level education, referring to letters of support from family, and describing a company he founded that donated used books to prison libraries.

It also makes the case that Ulbricht is not likely to flee the U.S., despite a claim in the Department of Justice's criminal complaint that he had pursued citizenship on the island of Dominica. Ulbricht traveled rarely, the letter states, and never left San Francisco after his recent move there from Austin, Texas, even after Department of Homeland Security agents visited his home asking about a collection of seized fake IDs he had allegedly ordered in the mail. "If Mr. Ulbricht were indeed the Dread Pirate Roberts responsible for the Silk Road, and possessing a portable and untraceable trove of Bitcoins worth millions of dollars, that visit from DHS would have been the only signal a criminal mastermind would have needed to depart the U.S. immediately," a footnote in Dratel's letter adds.

Dratel writes that Ulbricht has been held in solitary confinement in Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center's so-called "Special Housing Unit," and argues that has made it more difficult to consult with Ulbricht and also prevented Ulbricht's access to Corrlinks, a prison email system.

Ulbricht first appeared in a New York court earlier this month, which set his bail hearing for Thursday of this week. After that brief courtroom appearance, Dratel told reporters in the courthouse hallway that he will show his client is not the Dread Pirate Roberts. “The evidence can’t establish that he is who they say he is, or that he’s done what they say he’s done,” Dratel told reporters at the time, adding that Ulbricht would be willing to be subjected to electronic monitoring if he's released and is a "poster boy for bail."

The same day, a new black market drug site calling itself Silk Road 2.0 came online, administered by a figure also who also goes by the pseudonym the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Correction: Due to a typo in an earlier version of this story, I quoted Dratel as saying that Ulbricht is "not entirely financially dependent" on his supporters' bail pledges, when in fact he said "now entirely financially dependent. And the $700,000 in equity offered by Ulbricht's parents comes from their Costa Rica-based business, not a single home. Apologies for the errors.